Category: furniture.

I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m rather drawn to primitive pieces.  It’s hard to find a definitive description of ‘primitive’ when it comes to furniture, but I’m referring to pieces of furniture that look like someone made it by hand, most likely out in their barn.  I’m also referring to pieces that have a very worn paint finish, and really just look like they have been around for 100 years.  That brings me to the inspiration photo for today’s piece.

I found this photo on pinterest when searching for ‘black painted dressers’.  I’m not sure where it originates from, so I don’t have any info on this piece.  But it was definitely the jumping off point for the dresser I painted last weekend.  I knew I could approximate this look with some black milk paint, and in case you are wondering I am going to forgo adding the dripping paint spill on that third drawer down.

I’m starting with this dresser that I purchased at my local ReStore a few weeks ago.

You’re probably not quite seeing any comparison to that inspiration photo just yet, but trust me on this one.

To start with, I really didn’t care for the knobs that were on this dresser when I bought it.

I don’t think that these knobs were original to the piece.  Usually this style of furniture has a pull that looks somewhat like this …

Or this …

Or this …

But this dresser only has one hole for a knob, so obviously it didn’t originally have drawer pulls that required two holes.  So I guess I’m really not sure if those knobs were replacements or not.  Either way, they had to go.

I wanted to get pulls similar to those on my inspiration piece, but have you guys tried to order things like this lately?  It felt like every affordable version I found online was out of stock, or only available in a shiny brass or chrome.  I ended up using some cup pulls that I found at my local Menards.

The other change I made to this dresser was to remove the wooden brackets on either side of that back piece.

I just didn’t like the look of them.  They were screwed in place from the back, so it was easy to remove them.  I took them off and then gave that back piece a wiggle to make sure it didn’t absolutely require them for support (which it didn’t).  I filled the holes where the screws went through the remaining back piece with Dixie Belle’s Mud.

Next up I cleaned the dresser using TSP Substitute.  This piece was pretty gross, so it required a good clean.  However, I did not sand it before painting.  I knew I was going to use milk paint, and I was willing to risk some (or even a lot) of chipping.

Today’s q tip:  Milk paint is intended to soak into the surface of bare wood.  When using it on a surface that isn’t bare wood, it will chip when it meets resistance to absorbing into the wood in the form of oils (such as grease, oily finger prints, furniture polish, etc) or previous finishes such as varnish, poly, paint, etc.  If you want to mitigate that chipping, you can be sure to clean off any oily residues using TSP or TSP substitute, and/or you can scuff sand your piece to break down previous finishes.

I chose to just clean my piece and not scuff sand because I’d be OK with some chipping.  If you’re worried about excess chipping with milk paint, do both.  Or use a bonding agent.

While cleaning the inside of the dresser, I found that it had been signed …

I think that’s definitely a clue that this piece was made by hand rather than by machines in a factory.

When I went to pull out my Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Typewriter, I found that I only had about 1/4 cup of the powder left in the bag.  Yikes!  I was really nervous that this wouldn’t be enough paint for this project, but it turned out to be plenty.  Mainly because I ended up needing only one coat of paint.  I was going for a worn look anyway, so it was perfectly fine if I didn’t end up with fully opaque coverage.

Milk paint dries really fast, especially when you’re painting inside a heated house with pretty much zero humidity.  So once the paint was dry, I sanded my piece with vigor to get the worn look that I wanted.  I focused on areas that would have received more wear over time, like around the key holes and the edges of the drawers.

Next, I pulled out some of my European grain sack style stencils (from Maison de Stencils).  I knew I’d have some that could give me a look similar to the inspiration piece.

I used Dixie Belle paint in Putty to do the stenciling.

Finally, after vacuuming away all of the dust, I used Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta to seal the dresser.  I usually describe this product as halfway between hemp oil and wax.  It provides a little more protection than plain hemp oil, but not quite as much as wax.  I love using it over dark colors in particular though.  I think it really brings out the richness of the color.

I chose to line the drawers of this dresser with some map themed wrapping paper.  They had some ink stains that were a little unsightly, so I opted to add this last detail.

This was a fun one to work on and the perfect project for milk paint.

I think I did a pretty good job of creating the same ‘look’ as my inspiration piece, what do you think?

This dresser is the perfect size to use as a nightstand, it’s not terribly large.  It is for sale locally, so please check my ‘available for local sale‘ page for the dimensions and other info if interested.

 

Every once in a while I wonder to myself ‘is painted furniture going out of style?  and if so, what will I do?’ and then I feel a little panicky.

First of all, our whole house is full of painted furniture …

I certainly can’t replace it all.  Or at least not all at once.  And would I even want to?

I still really love my own pieces of painted furniture whether they are ‘in style’ or not.

But the bigger question is ‘what about my hobby?’  I call it a hobby because I haven’t come up with a better word to describe what I do here.

/ˈhɑːbi/ (plural hobbies) ​an activity that you do for pleasure when you are not working.

‘Hobby’ doesn’t really quite do it justice, but based on the Oxford Dictionary definition, it does fit.

Hobbies have come and gone from my life over the years.  One of the first hobbies I took up after we bought our house way, way back in 1988, was making stained glass windows.  I wasn’t going to be satisfied with just making those little doo-dads that you hang inside a regular window, I wanted to make full blown windows.  But you have to start somewhere, and I did start with making those suncatcher type things.  And after I had developed some still very rudimentary skills, I made the window that is in our piano room.

But I eventually grew bored with that hobby and I moved on to cross stitch.  Who else remembers the hey day of cross stitch?  I even belonged to a club, the Stitch and Bitch club.  We spent weekends at a friend’s cabin listening to the oldies station and stitching and bitching away.

But cross stitch went out of style and I replaced it with scrapbooking.

I loved scrapbooking.  But after years of doing it, I have 30 or so scrapbooks in the guestroom closet that I rarely ever look at.  And really, scrapbooking has gone out of style too, although on occasion I still enjoy creating scrapbook alternatives like the index cards …

Painting furniture and otherwise refurbishing vintage finds has really stuck with me though.  I started this particular hobby way back in the 90’s when the shabby chic movement was all the rage.

Back in the day I painted everything in the Rachel Ashwell palette of white, pink, pale green or pale aqua.  And I did all of that lettering by hand!  Isn’t that crazy?

Eventually I moved on and added more saturated colors into my work, like Miss Mustard Seeds’ Kitchen Scale.

Sometimes I cringe now when I look back at some of the pieces I painted in the early days of my blog though.

I mean really?  What was I thinking painting those trim pieces white?  I want to go back and paint them in the same color as the rest of the dresser so that they blend rather than pop now.  And by the way, that is Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Artissimo on that one.

But even though I’m cringing when I look back at some of my earlier work, what I’m also realizing is that my style has definitely evolved over the past 25 years.

Ahhh, so much better without that contrasting trim, don’t you think?

And stencils are so much better than my old hand painted lettering.

Yes, these pieces are still painted, but they are painted in a more current style than those shabby chic pieces from two decades ago.

And I’ve gradually leaned towards leaving more things unpainted, like knobs, and tops …

or even an entire chair …

So in the end, maybe it doesn’t really matter whether or not painted furniture is going ‘out of style.’  We can all just continue to grow and let our styles evolve naturally over time.  That’s my plan anyway.  How about you?

As I shared last week, or was it the week before?  I don’t know, time flies so quickly these days it feels like the weeks all blend together.

Anyway, as I shared, I decided to take this bench back to the drawing board.

Again.

It started out as a bed, then it became a bench, and then it sat unsold for about 9 months.

I decided it was either the color, the transfer, or the price.  But I reduced the price and it still didn’t go.  Let me take a moment to reflect on that.  In all of my years of selling furniture I have found that lowering the price on a piece that isn’t selling almost never makes a difference.  My prices tend to be on the lower side anyway, so if a piece isn’t selling it’s not usually because of the price.  That being said, I do charge more for these benches because I pay Ken for the materials and for his time to turn them from beds into benches.  So I tried lowering the price, and still, no sale.

Ken thought the problem was those posts sticking up above the seat level on the front corners though.  Those has always bugged him, and he really wanted the chance to try something different.  So he brought it back to his workshop and cut the posts off the front corners, tapered the remaining top of each post to make it look more natural, and then replaced those two outer boards on the seat.

I do prefer this look over the old one, it’s definitely a little less fussy.

Next up I sanded off the transfer.

Today’s q tip:  when removing a transfer from something, you do have to fully remove it before painting over it.  Otherwise you will see an outline through your new paint.  I have found that the quickest solution is to put an 80 grit paper on my orbital sander and go to town on it.  I have tried using mineral spirits and that didn’t work for me.  After lots of elbow grease with a 3M scrubby pad saturated in mineral spirits, it still didn’t remove the transfer fully.

So, I sanded the transfer off, wiped away any dust and gave the bench a coat of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.  I had decided to just go back to basic black, which I know sells well.  And you know what?  I can’t really say why, but black just wasn’t working on this piece.  So once again, I decided to pivot (because that’s the trendy thing to do now).  I pulled out the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth and covered up that black.

The warm, almost creamy but not quite, off white shade of Drop Cloth just really does it for me.

The bench felt a little too plain without anything on that big framed rectangle on the back though, so I decided to add a fairly simple black transfer.

This is a section from a newer re.design with prima transfer called French Specialties.

The top section fit the space perfectly.  It went on super easily.  I love the ‘Paris 1889’ part in the middle.

It wasn’t until I was applying clear wax over it that I noticed a problem.

Do you see it?  Let me give you a minute.  I sort of gave it away in my blog post title.

Yeah.  It says the same thing three times over.  Top curved line, and bottom two lines.  Cakes and pastries, cakes and pastries, cakes and pastries.  What the what? Not that I don’t love cakes and pastries, and I’d be OK with the top curved line, and just one of the bottom lines.  But those two bottom lines did me in.

All I can think is that because the wording is French, I just simply didn’t take the time to ‘read’ the transfer.  I was too busy looking at the overall layout, admiring the fonts, thinking the scale of the design was perfect for my piece.  And frankly, assuming that the wording was vetted by re.design with prima.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it, am I right?  Or maybe it’s just me.  Am I too particular?  Are any of you not bothered by the repetitive lines?

Since I’d already waxed over it, the process of removing just one of the bottom two lines becomes much more complicated.  If only I’d noticed before waxing.  I could have sanded one line off, touched up the paint, and moved on.  But with wax on it, and because those lines are fairly close together, I’m not sure I can successfully sand off that section and blend the touch up paint into the waxed areas that remain without damaging the rest of the transfer.

So tell me, what are your thoughts on this?

Would you …

a.  List it for sale as is because it’s just not that big of a deal and only neurotic perfectionists like myself are going to notice.

OR

b.  Try to remove one of those cakes and pastries lines from the bottom by sanding and hope that you can blend the repair seamlessly.

OR

c.  Shove this bench in the corner for 30 days while the wax cures and hope that you can paint over one of those lines without sanding (see q tip above before choosing this option!).

Leave me a comment and let me know what you would do!

Even after more than 25 years of refurbishing vintage furniture, I don’t always know exactly which pieces will sell quickly, and which ones won’t sell at all.  Somehow I still sometimes manage to get it wrong when making decisions about the new look for a piece.

In general, I find that pieces painted in a neutral color such as white, black, dark navy or grey sell really quickly.

While pieces painted in a less neutral color tend to take longer to sell, and sometimes don’t sell at all.  For example, I originally painted this bench in a smoky pale blue …

I thought the transfer was really pretty, and had the perfect message for a foyer.  And although the color wasn’t quite neutral, it also wasn’t really bright.

But it did not sell.  I gave it 9 months, and then decided to re-paint it in my favorite Dixie Belle Drop Cloth.

And it sold right away.

Sometimes the pieces painted in neutrals don’t sell either though.  For example, this dresser did not sell despite its white paint job.

This one really surprised me, the white pieces usually sell easily.  Was it the toile transfer on those two upper drawers?  I loved it, but clearly it was not everyone’s cup of tea.

After months of trying to sell it, I ended up sanding off the toile and adding an IOD transfer over the entire front of the dresser instead.

And once again, it sold fairly quickly.

But there are always exceptions to the neutral color rule, my mid-mod pieces painted in Fusion’s Park Bench green have always flown off the shelf.

And even this vintage piece painted in a vibrant green milk paint (Sweet Pickins In a Pickle) sold, although it did take a little bit longer than the neutral pieces.

I do think that you have to get to know your own geographical area and what will sell best in your neck of the woods too.  I suspect that the floral pieces may do better in the south, while here in the upper mid-west, people are a little more conservative.  I’m not sure if conservative is the right word, but we’re maybe just a bit less frilly (correct me if I’m wrong about that Southerners).  So whenever I add a floral transfer to a piece, I always assume it will take a little longer to sell.

The exception to that rule is this one though …

That’s the Rose Celebration transfer from re.design with prima.  I’ve only used it twice, but both times the piece sold really quickly.

Then there was this piece …

For the life of me, I couldn’t sell this piece with the mirror attached. Generally, I find that it’s more difficult to sell a dresser with a mirror than without.  I think it’s because dressers are so much more versatile without their mirrors.  They can be used in a dining room, or a living room as a TV stand, or in the laundry room or home office.  You’d think buyers could just take the mirror off, but I think most people are reluctant to dismantle a piece like this.

But not me.  With my handyman Ken’s help, I removed the mirror and replaced it with some trim that I painted to match.

And that was all it took to get this one to sell.

Finally, I also find that certain pieces of furniture sell faster than others.  Dressers, nightstands and washstands are the easiest to sell for me.

Things like hutches, cabinets, buffets and chairs usually take a little longer.

And then we have desks and benches.

Desks have just never been a quick sell for me.  Perhaps it’s because people don’t really need desks anymore, or at least not in the traditional sense.  Still, I am a bit surprised that I haven’t found a buyer yet for this one …

At this point I plan to paint a mirror to match that can be hung on the wall behind it to turn it into more of a vanity/dressing table.  Then I’ll restage my photos and try again.  Maybe that will help, maybe not.  I will really be bummed if I eventually have to paint over it.  I absolutely love the IOD transfer I used.  I may have to figure out a way to keep it myself if I can’t sell it.

The benches that Ken makes out of old bed frames always take longer to sell as well.  Maybe it’s because I have to charge more for them to pay for the materials and for Ken’s time.  Some of them sold fairly quickly though, like this one in basic black …

Some of them took a fair amount of time to sell, but did eventually go, like this one …

and this one …

And that brings me to this piece.

This one started out as a bed frame.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a 3/4 sized bed (the original owner swore it was a twin, but I should have measured myself).  Once that little detail came to light, I sent the pieces over to Ken’s workshop to be turned into a bench.

I thought he did a brilliant job of re-working that footboard, but Ken was not happy with how it turned out.  He didn’t like the fact that the footboard had those corner posts that stuck up on either side of the seat in the front.  I thought that would be OK though.  It was already mostly painted in Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy and had the Cosmic Roses transfer from re.design with prima on the back.  I’d done this combo before, on this dresser …

and it was a success.  So I touched up the paint here and there and listed it for sale.

But this bench just hasn’t sold.  Is it the color?  Is it the floral transfer?  Is it those posts sticking up in the front?  Or is it a little bit of all three?

I’m not really sure.  So I’m going to change all three.  Last week it once again went back to Ken’s workshop.  He cut off the tops of those posts in the front, then he replaced the two outer boards on the seat.

Now it’s back in my workshop.  I’ve sanded off the transfer and am now giving some more thought to its new look.  Any ideas?  I’ve very tempted to just paint it black.

For those of you who also paint furniture, what do you find sells best in your area?  Do you have a magic formula that works every time?  Leave a comment and share your experience with the rest of us!